Why I Quit Using Vinted to Sell Clothes Online

A Review of Vinted, the app for selling clothing

I used Vinted, Poshmark and Tradesy when I first started selling clothes online, and I had pretty decent numbers. (To illuminate: I had 15-20 listings on each site and sold about nine or ten items in the first month.) I noticed right away that the vast majority of those sales were from Poshmark. However, most of the money was from Tradesy. While posting on Vinted can be great for reasons I’ll explain in a moment, buying on it can be less than great because of their commission structure (in other words, how they make their money off of the app).

Vinted’s Commission Structure

Vinted is a popular alternative to Poshmark for selling clothes. Some people say Poshmark is getting oversaturated with people who want to sell, and others complain that the commission they take is too high. And while I don’t necessarily agree with those two complaints about Poshmark, one of the coolest things about Vinted is that they don’t take commission from the seller.

However, they do take commission… from the buyer. And while that stopped me from buying quite a few things, it didn’t stop a lot of people. I got a few sales and was pretty happy with the little amount of money I was making. And at first, I really enjoyed being a “vintie.” Listing was really easy because I didn’t have to consider how much commission would be taken, and I liked scrolling through other users’ closets. But, despite not having to watch a sometimes painful portion of my profits be absorbed by fees and commissions, I noticed a painful decline in sales while my Poshmark and Tradesy accounts stayed pretty steady. Vinted’s algorithm doesn’t seem to accommodate users who just want to drop prices and share their listings; instead, it seems like they only reward sellers who constantly have new listings.

But that wasn’t what bothered me most about using Vinted, and it isn’t why I ultimately stopped using it to sell clothes. Instead, I was upset by the selling process itself. On Tradesy, a buyer can message you and you can respond. If you want to drop the price for them, you can. Then they buy it or they don’t. On Poshmark, you can offer buyers a discounted price, they can offer you a different price, and they can bundle and you can negotiate the bundle price.

Shopping on Vinted Can be a Hassle

With Vinted, if a buyer wants to do anything but buy your listing for exactly your listed price, there is always an extra step. And often, that extra step prevents them from completing the sale. For example, if a buyer creates a bundle, they have to ask you to add shipping to the bundle. Once you decide the shipping cost for the bundle, you then have to send the amount back to them with the newly calculated shipping fee. This has eliminated all chances of an impulse buy, and also allows the rush of the find to dissipate. More than once, my buyer never responded.

As I mentioned above, shopping on vinted can be fun, but it is time-consuming. The search features are pretty standard, but when you are shopping a specific closet in order to bundle and save on shipping, there are no sort features. And, if shopping can be a hassle for you… that means it’s a hassle for your buyers too.

The App is Slow

Okay, I know we live in fast times and that sometimes we need to slow down and all that, but the Vinted app is infuriatingly slow. I started using it over two years ago, and last time I checked (five minutes ago so I could write this post), it was still as slow as ever. Again, that means it’s slow for your buyers too.

In addition to being slow, it occasionally crashes. This can happen in the middle of your listing process. And it’s really, really annoying. Since the app takes a little while to load your options for your listing, you’ve already had to wait.

I try to be patient with my apps. I know the developers are working hard and trying their best to get everything working well, and I know that it takes a long time to make improvements. But vinted has been around for a while now, and they’ve made a few updates but haven’t done anything about their most fundamental flaws. Flaws that, unfortunately, translate to less dollars in my bank account.

So, in conclusion, I know vinted works for a lot of people. And kudos to the vinted sellers who have it nailed down. But, as for me–I threw in the towel because vinted was confusing, slow and not profitable enough in today’s expensive and fast-moving world.

“Twenty years from now, you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”